INPUT FOR SR DISABILITY REPORT ON DISABILITY-

INCLUSIVE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION*

From: DCDD (Dutch Coalition on Disability and Development)

To: Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities (OHCHR)

* Given answers are based on the report commissioned by DCDD, called ‘An Untapped Potential’ (2019).

This document investigates disability inclusiveness in the Dutch development sector, including measures

taken by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since The Netherlands ratified the UN CRPD. The full report can be consulted online:

https://www.dcdd.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/An-Untapped-Potential.pdf

DCDD Input

(1) Please describe how your country’s international cooperation efforts, including international

development aid, are inclusive of and accessible to persons with disabilities; and how is funding

tracked and reported.

Analysis1 shows that there is a growing awareness within the Dutch government about the

importance of disability inclusion in the development space, but attempts to explicitly address Article

32 of CRPD remain either absent or lacklustre. According to the Netherlands Institute for Human

Rights2, development programmes supported by the Dutch government structurally fail to take into

account the rights of people with disabilities. Programmes in which disability is either mainstreamed

or through which specific support is provided to people with disabilities, are estimated to represent

less than 2% of the total Dutch Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget3.

To put differently: 98% of the ODA budget seems to be allocated to programs that are likely to have a

negative impact on equal opportunities for people with disabilities. Because there is no specific

attention to disability mainstreaming in these programs, they might unintentionally maintain existing

barriers or create new ones. Think of inaccessible information campaigns, construction of physical

infrastructure and design of digital infrastructure without using the international accessibility

1 DCDD. (2019): “An Untapped Potential: How disability inclusive is the Dutch development sector? Steps taken since the ratification of

UN CRPD”: https://www.dcdd.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/An-Untapped-Potential.pdf2 “Submission of the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights to the UN CRPD Committee” (2018, p.25): https://mensenrechten.nl/nl/publicatie/38664 3 This estimate is based on an overview which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared in a letter to Parliament in June 2019. The letter (in

Dutch) can be found here: https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/

detail?id=2019Z14004&did=2019D28805. See ‘Figure 1’ for further details on this overview. The Dutch government spends around 4

billion per year on ODA in total. DCDD estimates that 44 million goes to demonstrably disability inclusive and/or target group-oriented

development programmes; which is 1% of the total ODA funds. However, as the Minister states in her letter, the overview they

provided is not complete, which results in a final estimate of “less than 2%”.

guidelines, etc. The Ministry has important instruments in areas such as food security, education,

employment, trade, water and sanitation, sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial support and

emergency aid, in which people with disabilities could participate, provided that sufficient attention

would be paid to mainstreaming disability.

Although reporting is considered important by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the use of

standards and markers is very limited. The Netherlands is not using the OECD DAC Disability Marker;

nor does it promote the use of the Washington Group Questions among its partners. While for

various of its funding mechanisms partners are requested to report on questions related to ‘gender

and inclusion’, in none of its reporting formats are there questions specifically focussed on disability

inclusion or people with disabilities. Until now, there are no intentions expressed or commitments

made by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to include disability as part of reporting requirements,

and coherent approaches to intersectionality are missing.

The most notable steps that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken, since it ratified the CRPD, are:

- The establishment of the Voice Global Fund4 2016-2024, through which projects of people

with disabilities (and 4 other marginalized groups) are supported. Via this fund,

approximately 1.5 million Euro per year goes to grassroots projects of people with

disabilities. This is the only funding mechanism which has ‘people with disabilities’ as an

explicit target group.

- The Accountability Fund (managed by the Dutch diplomatic missions, specifically designed

for local CSOs), seems to be increasingly used by embassies to support disability projects.

- The Ministry has committed to the implementation of the IASC Guidelines on Inclusion of

Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action (following its endorsement of the Disability

Charter in 2016). It started a dialogue with its Dutch humanitarian partners (the Dutch Relief

Alliance) on the necessary steps to implement these guidelines, such as capacity building.

However, it has not yet put a particular monitoring mechanism in place to assess the

disability inclusiveness of its humanitarian aid spending.

- A study was recently commissioned by the Ministry regarding youth with disabilities and

their transition from education to employment. It is not yet clear how the outcomes of this

study will be translated into programmes and monitoring.

4 See https://voice.global/

While the attention for disability inclusion is slowly increasing in some areas of development policy

and humanitarian aid; such attention is still entirely absent in the Ministry’s international human

rights policies and programmes as well as its trade policies (incl. international corporate social

responsibility efforts). The inability of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to successfully integrate and

implement disability inclusion policies may be attributed to a lack of capacity. There is merely one

focal person for CRPD appointed within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and even for this person,

disability inclusion is not the core task of this position and remains an addition to other core activities

in the field of development cooperation.

Several members of the House of representatives of the Dutch Parliament posed questions to the

Minister on the inclusion of people with a disability within the Dutch trade and aid agenda, and filed

several motions. The Minister of Foreign Trade & Development Cooperation delivered on her

commitment to give insights on this matter through the letter “Nederlandse internationale inzet voor

mensen met een beperking”5 to the House of representatives of the Dutch Parliament. The overview

given in Figure 1 summarizes the programmes mentioned in that letter. The letter states that the

overview the ministry provides is not exhaustive.

Figure 1. Overview of International Disability Programmes Supported by The Dutch Government.

5 Ministry of Foreign Trade & Development Cooperation. (2019). Kamerbrief over Nederlandse internationale inzet voor mensen met een beperking. Letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the House of Representatives of the Dutch Parliament. Available at: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/kamerstukken/2019/07/02/kamerbrief-over-nederlandse-internationale-inzet-voor- mensen-met-een-beperking . There are only few budget amounts mentioned in the letter. DCDD’s estimate of 44 million per year is made as follows: Via Voice Global Fund, 1.5 million per year goes to projects of people with disabilities. In addition, there are 10 projects through the embassies which do not appear to be large-scale projects, so it is estimated that this amounts to a maximum of 4 million together with Voice. This makes around 2% of the total budget for civil society programmes (210 million). The contribution to Global Partnership for Education is 20 million and to Education Cannot Wait 3 million; together with the other two inclusive multilateral programs mentioned in the letter, this is estimated to amount to a maximum of 40 million a year. That is about 1% of the total ODA budget of 4 billion per year. Total yearly budget of Dutch foreign aid and trade estimated to be more than four billion euros: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binaries/rijksoverheid/documenten/begrotingen/2018/09/18/hgis---nota-homogene- groepinternationale-samenwerking-rijksbegroting-2019/HGIS-nota_2019.pdf

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(2) Please describe how South-South and triangular cooperation support your country’s efforts to

implement the rights of persons with disabilities, including by facilitating the exchange of innovative

knowledge, skills and successful initiatives.

The Dutch government’s involvement in or support of international exchange to promote disability

inclusion seems to be very limited. While, the Netherlands is part of the GLAD Network 6, it does not

participate in the network actively. It is mostly Dutch CSOs (NGOs with a disability focus) that are

taking the lead in facilitating South-South and triangular cooperation to enhance disability inclusion.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the Voice Global Fund (established by the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, 2016-2024) supports South-South learning as part of its funding mechanism. One example is

6 https://gladnetwork.net5

the ‘Voices for Inclusion’7 project. This project centralizes learning between different types of

marginalized groups in 5 countries (Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Nigeria, Indonesia and Philippines) and

explores whether collaboration between these groups generates more effective influencing of policy

and practices.

(3) Please describe how your country coordinates, prioritizes and manages aid received from

international cooperation in order to ensure that national development programmes are inclusive of

and accessible to persons with disabilities.

/ Not relevant for the Netherlands.

(4) Please explain whether the Sustainable Development Goals resulted in increased international

development aid benefitting persons with disabilities in your country and how.

The ratification of the CRPD (in 2016) followed the endorsement of the SDGs with its principle of

‘leave no one behind’ (in 2015); which makes that the two frameworks seem to mutually reinforce

each other. Both are used by DCDD simultaneously to advocate for more disability inclusive

international policies. There is growing awareness about the importance of disability inclusion and

the often marginalized position of people with disabilities. This awareness is expressed in the policy

note8 ‘Investing in Global prospects’ by the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Trade and Development

Cooperation. In this note three explicit references are made to ‘leave no one behind’ as a guiding

principle in the Dutch international development agenda.

The same policy note makes two references to people with disabilities. In relation to CSOs, the policy

note mentions people with disabilities as one of the marginalized groups that require specific

support. In relation to humanitarian interventions, people with disabilities are mentioned as an

important target group requiring structural attention. Furthermore, Minister Kaag, in collaboration

with the World Health Organization (WHO), has expressed the wish to pay more attention to

psychosocial and mental health support for people experiencing trauma during emergencies. All

these references and intentions to bring disability inclusion forward are a positive and welcomed

step.

7 https://voice.global/grantees/voices-for-inclusion/8 Ministry of Foreign Trade & Development Cooperation. (2019). Investing in Global Prospects. Available at: https://www.government.nl/documents/policy-notes/2018/05/18/investing-inglobal-prospects

However, while ‘leave no one behind’ is often referenced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, any

explicit reference to the CRPD itself and its relevance for the Netherlands remains absent, both in the

development policy note and in the letter sent to the House of Representatives of the Dutch

Parliament9. Moreover, as mentioned above, these policy intentions have so far hardly been

mainstreamed or translated into concrete action, so the actual benefit to people with disabilities in

countries where the Dutch government provides development support remains lacklustre. And

finally, the annual Dutch SDG progress reports (voluntary reviews) do not monitor on disability

inclusion indicators. All of this seems to be in contrast with the stated ambition of the Dutch

government to support people who are left behind.

(5) Please describe to what extent and how are persons with disabilities and their organizations

involved and consulted in decisions related to international cooperation in your country, and how they

can access international cooperation funds and grants (including legal requirements, procedures and

challenges).

Whereas the Dutch Coalition on Disability and Development (DCDD) consists of organizations and

individuals with specific expertise on disability inclusion, the coalition is only consulted twice a year

by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and sometimes there is contact on ad hoc basis. These

consultations focus on an exchange of information, experiences and ‘good practices’. DCDD or any

other disability representatives are not involved by the Ministry (nor its embassies) in actual

decision-making, programme development / assessment or policy development. Moreover, the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs employs very few civil servants with a disability, either in The Hague or at

its embassies – if they do exist, they do not play an active role in disability-related policy discussions.

For most Dutch disability organisations, which are relatively smaller in size and budget than many

other Dutch NGOs, it is challenging to access the funding mechanisms of the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, as they cannot compete with the larger NGOs, or cannot handle the required minimum

budget, and (due to limited awareness about disability inclusion in the sector) are rarely invited to

join consortia of larger NGOs. Notable exceptions are the Voice Global Fund and the Accountability

Fund, which specifically provide more flexible funding for smaller Southern-based organisations –

9 Ministry of Foreign Trade & Development Cooperation. (2019). Kamerbrief over Nederlandse internationale inzet voor mensen met een beperking. Letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the House of Representatives of the Dutch Parliament. Available at: https://www. rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/kamerstukken/2019/07/02/kamerbrief-over-nederlandseinternationale-inzet-voor- mensen-met-een-beperking

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these funds provide the best access for grassroots disability initiatives in the South (but limited

access for Dutch-based disability NGOs).

(6) Please provide any information and statistical data available on disability-inclusive international

cooperation in your country, including information related to the challenges and limitations of the

international aid system to promote the rights of persons with disabilities.

There is very limited data available, since disability inclusion is not systematically monitored. The

best available data can be found in the Untapped Potential Report10, as summarized under question

1. The report proposed the following nine recommendations for the Dutch government, to take

critical steps to implement the CRPD and Article 32 through its international cooperation

programmes and policies:

1. Develop and disseminate a government memo on the implementation of CRPD article 32

2. Adopt the OECD DAC disability marker to track progress on disability inclusion

3. Facilitate empowerment (specific support) and inclusion (mainstreaming) simultaneously

4. Embed programmes in the local context

5. Enhance government capacity (human resources, knowledge and funding) on disability inclusion

6. Adopt an intersectional lens to address the multiple layers of exclusion

7. Become internationally engaged to learn and cooperate on disability inclusion globally

8. Realise the economic gains of disability inclusion

9. Start doing the work!

While these recommendations provide guidance on how to make headway on implementing Article

32, it is crucial to state that as long as people with disabilities are stigmatized and seen as incapable

and people experience discomfort around them, it will remain a challenge to fully implement Article

32. DCDD feels that – even though awareness on disability inclusion started to grow – a lot of work is

still needed to change mindsets within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the broader Dutch

development sector, to increase understanding of disability, before inclusion can be truly embraced.

Contact details: Lieke Scheewe Kim BrandsCoordinator & Policy Advisor DCDD Junior Lobby & Network Coordinator DCDDl.scheewe@dcdd.nl k.brands@dcdd.nl

10 https://www.dcdd.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/An-Untapped-Potential.pdf